With iOS 5 comes AirPlay Mirroring, the ability for iPhones and iPads to wirelessly send live video content to other displays, such as those running on AppleTV. Already, one game developer is putting that technology to an interesting use.

MetalStorm: Wingman is a flight combat simulator for iPhone and iPad that has already proven popular with over 5 million downloads. But as the video below shows, AirPlay Mirroring opens up a new dimension for the game: the TV shows the action, and the iOS device becomes a controller complete with cockpit details.

Players tilt or turn the device to control the on-screen airplane. Virtual buttons on the device control functions like launching missiles and evasive barrel rolls. Otherwise, the device screen is full of realistic cockpit instruments. These and other details can be seen in the trailer video below.

MetalStorm: Wingman is produced by Z2Live, a Seattle-based studio that unknowingly hired a 17-year-old rockstar programmer to write a large part of the game. Lou Fasulo, the company’s COO, commented that AirPlay Mirroring could put the mobile device “at the center of all home entertainment.”

Yesterday, Valve head Gabe Newell spoke on exactly this possibility: that Apple would suddenly launch a product that took over the living room and made consoles obsolete. Has it already?

It’s obvious that the war for the living room is on. While console builders up their game with new controls and new software, others are focused on extending the display. In many ways, this iOS execution of MetalStorm is reminiscent of the Wii U announcement from this year’s E3.

What’s surprising about MetalStorm isn’t that it uses a new feature in iOS 5. Rather, it uses the feature in an unexpected way. Plenty of observers expected Angry Birds gameplay to be streamed to an Apple TV on day one, but one player would still have to look down at the screen to touch and aim the bird while others were able to look on. Here, though, the word “Mirroring” almost doesn’t apply: there’s a controller, which happens to be a touch screen, which is separate from the gameplay going on on the big TV. It’s much closer to an evolution of the Nintendo DS than just a new feature for Angry Birds players to mess around with.

MetalStorm hasn’t single-handedly ended the war for the living room, but it does provide a glimpse of what the future could look like.